How better productivity and order can boost your business!

Catch Robert Jewell on Impact Radio every Monday at 18h00: Business Financial Mastery.

Issue 745th March 2020

How better productivity and order can boost your business!

This is the 6th session in the a4e Business Financial Mastery Educational Campaign and we thank Brian Walsh from the Real Entrepreneur Institute for his input. Brian is founder of the institute and a leading authority on entrepreneurship and human behaviour.

Three questions posed to our Entrepreneurs were: “Do you use the right tools to manage your time effectively?” – 64% of respondents said yes; “Do you focus on what really matters and being super productive?” – 78% said yes: “Are your business processes documented and organised and working efficiently?” – 53% said yes.The responses belie the facts though, because as Brian observed “the Entrepreneurs questioned mostly don’t really understand the context of working ‘on’ a business versus working ‘in’ a business. They’re not fully aware of this concept of productivity and order to free you from your business and produce the best results.

Entrepreneurs are so often caught up in the operational side of their businesses, with so much focus on getting today’s job done, that they don’t build their business.

A key component is to employ others to work in the business and ensure you are actually being able to be the business owner and work strategically on the business!

How do we work on a business instead of in it?

Documenting things – order is documenting how we do things – the step by step processes of all your business activities and how they should be done. We always say computer apps are really there to monitor and where possible automate processes, but we have to define the processes. So the starting point is to create order through documenting those processes.

Know what’s important – What are your values? Does the business serve what’s important to you directly or indirectly? Being productive is not just working hard – it’s using every minute in such a way that you’re maximising the outcome and results that you’re getting from your business for both your personal life and your business as a whole.

Combine vision and order – There’s no ‘organised chaos.’ Chaos means disorder and organised means order. By implementing effective order in a business you can resolve many of its challenges. But also don’t under estimate the importance of ensuring you’re doing what serves you too, because that is a critical component to the success. Combine the vision of who you are and order, in order for an operation to effectively work.

Effective time management – You can’t actually manage time, but you can manage what you do in your time. It comes back to identifying and concentrating on what’s truly important. Stephen Covey in his book Seven Habits of Highly Effective People talks about 4 quadrants in life when it comes to time. Quadrant 1 – it is important and urgent. Quadrant 2 – it is important – but not urgent. Quadrant 3 – it is urgent – but not important and quadrant 4 is neither urgent nor important. Quadrant 2, where we work on resolving the problem, planning, prevention and doing the things that are actually taking the business to the next level, is actually the one that’s most important. We’re so addicted to urgency though, that a lot of people end up in quadrant 3 which is urgent but not important. Make appointments with yourself to do the things that are truly most important!

Complete what you start – Completion is one of the greatest forms of motivation. Take a task that’s critical, finish it and then move on to the next one. By doing that you actually inspire and motivate yourself to go and do more.

All these components are critical to achieve better productivity and order in your business, which is critical to success as an Entrepreneur! To get in touch with Brian go to Real Entrepreneur.co.za
Brian Walsh can be contacted at:
Email: brian@entrepreneur.co.za

Are you a business owner, are you worried and stressed out because your books are not in order or not up to date?

At Accounting for Entrepreneurs, we have the perfect solution for you, with our simple, elegant and affordable online business accounting packages, we do the accounting you either can’t or don’t want to do.

SMS “accounting” to 082 575 4379 and a professional accountant will call you back to help you get your books sorted in no time.

Our next newsletter will be on how to use the power of business software to boost your business.